Slade: Has Half The World Heard Merry Xmas Everybody?

Can you believe that nearly half the world’s population has already heard Slade’s evergreen Merry Xmas Everybody this year?That’s the claim being made by the Performing Rights Society, who say that it’s been played in over 47 countries during 2009. Well, they should know, as the PRS collects royalties on behalf of composers and songwriters. However, their suggestion that, therefore, up to 42 per cent of world’s population might have therefore listened to the 1973 hit strikes us as being rather optimistic. They might have had the opportunity, but how many have taken advantage?

In case you’ve never heard Merry Xmas Everybody, you’ll find it on the new compilation Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade Party Hits.

Here

Greatest Christmas hits of the last 2000 years: No. 3

24th December

A GREAT END TO A GREAT YEAR FOR SLADE!!!!!!!!!!!

K.O.R . -Ilpo -  

 A new arrival is Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody' which is a "new" CD release

and duly moved 54-22 to give it its highest chart placing since it made Number 20 for Christmas 1983.

http://uk.launch.yahoo.com/c/uk/single_charts.html 

The track has now been a Top 40 hit on five separate occasions and has made the Top 75 chart ten times. Hitting Number One in 1973, it reappeared in 1980 in a live version, in 81, 82, 83, 84, 85 and 86 in the original and in 98 in a remix version which limped to Number 30.

http://uk.launch.yahoo.com:80/charts/comment.html

4th December

K.O.R. - Ilpo -

2nd December

Following message and pictures arrived today from Rod and Wendy:

"As you already know, the Merry Christmas 2006 will be released in the UK on Monday 4th December. Many fans have asked about a green cover issue.

Well here it is......This version has different tracks and is available only from

selected ASDA supermarkets in the UK.

The tracks are as follows - Merry Xmas, Here's to the New Year and Santa Claus is

Coming to Town.  ASDA is currently using Merry Xmas in their TV advertising

in the run up to Christmas. This is released between ASDA and Nobbys Nuts."

Everybody Tour 2006  

23rt November 2006  

Lyrics

Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall?
It’s the time that every Santa has a ball
Does he ride a red nosed reindeer?
Has a ton upon his sleigh?
Do the fairies keep him sober for a day?

So here it is,
Merry Christmas,
Everybody’s having fun,
Look to the future now
It’s only just begun.

Are you waiting for the family to arrive?
Are you sure you’ve got the room to spare inside?
Does your Granny always tell you
That the old songs are the best,
Then she’s up and rock ‘n’ rollin’ with the rest...

So here it is,
Merry Christmas,
Everybody’s having fun,
Look to the future now
It’s only just begun.

What will your daddy do
when he sees your mama
kissing Santa Claus?
Aha

Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall?
Are you hoping that the snow will to start to fall?
Do you ride on down the hillside
In a buggy you have made?
When you land upon your head then you’ve been slayed.

So here it is,
Merry Christmas,
Everybody’s having fun,
Look to the future now
It’s only just begun. (x 4)

Slade Merry Christmas Everybody TOTP 1983

left:  1. Merry Xmas Everybody
2. Cum On Feel The Noize

http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=381797

 right: 1. Merry Xmas Everybody
2. Don't Blame Me
3. Far Far Away

The Golden record

The arrival of the UK CD single, almost overnight, created a whole new area of instant collector’s items. Whilst CD players are now as affordable as a pair of jeans, back in the mid- to late-80’s they were expensive ‘new technology’. Initially the CD single contained the same tracks or versions as the dominant 12" single format of the day, but it wasn’t long before the marketing men began to include exclusive content. Today there are still thousands of CD singles, particularly from the 1980’s and early 1990’s which have versions or remixes that have never been reissued on a digital format - yes, there’s still a lifetime of music that you can’t get as a legal download, and lots of it is available on CD singles! For those who remember the tactile pleasures associated with buying and listening to music, the CD single was both an evolutionary and revolutionary step in the life of the single format. Aside from the music, the packaging developed from clear jewel cases, to card wallets - sometimes gatefold, then digipaks and eco-paks, to all manner of exotic injection-moulded plastic novelties. Sometimes it seemed that the only limit was your imagination! In fact you could argue that they were the last true music format that could be called ‘collectable’.

Now approaching their 20th year all but the very latest releases are deleted and long out-of-print. However, their success as a format means that there’s still a huge amount of recorded music available for your enjoyment. Their convenient size makes for efficient storage and the digital format ensures that a Mint condition CD single will sound as good today as it did when first manufactured.

http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=213165

COVER VERSION "MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY"

YouTube - Alistair Griffin - Merry Christmas Everybody

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxlvHaWKWq0

The Wombats And More For KIDS Christmas Album
Taking on Slade and Bing Crosby...

The quite fantastic record label KIDS are to release a special Christmas album next month.

A host of their artists including The Wombats, Mighty Six Ninety and Oppenheimer deliver their interpretations of some of the Christmas classics.

Highlights include Findlay Brown’s take on Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’ and KIDS Allstarz’ – featuring the band Paper Cuts and Kids office staff – cover of Slade’s seminal ‘Merry Christmas Everybody.’

The album will be strictly limited to just 500 copies on CD and also via digital download from December 11.

The full track-listing is as follows:

1. KIDS Allstarz – ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’
2. Oppenheimer – ‘Christmas (Baby Come Home)’
3. It Hugs Back – ‘Christmas on the Square’
4. The Wombats – ‘Is This Christmas?’
5. Might Six Ninety – ‘White Christmas’
6. Young Playthings – ‘Whadaya Want For Christmas’
7. West End Girls – ‘Always on my Mind’
8. Findlay Brown – ‘Last Christmas’
9. Popular Workshop – ‘Christmas Wrapping’
10. Sam Elliot – ‘Walking In A White Christmas’
11. Captain Kidd – 'Boxing Day Ride'

http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news?id=24851

K.O.R. - Ilpo -

"Und der alte Tony Christie kanns auch nicht lassen

und trällert angeblich `Merry Xmas Everybody´,

was ich so lange nicht glaube, bis ich`s nicht selber gehört habe.

"And the old Tony Christie can`t let it bee and trill also ` Merry Xmas Everybody´

what I first can believe, when I will listening themself "

Peter König, Austria

Now by Amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Merry-Xmas-Everybody-Tony-Christie/dp/B000CBVMKE

Da soll es ja auch eine neue Coverversion von Merry Xmas von den Twins geben!!
Weiß du Näheres dazu???

There should it also give a new coverversion of "Merry Christmas Everybody" from the TWINS.

Do you know about it ?
 

 Aber keines kommt an Merry Xmas von unseren Boyz heran, das kann man zu jeder Zeit spielen, !

Also Merry Xmas und
                      keep on rockin                        

wünscht Peter
Sladie1, Salzburg/Austria

************

Twin haben eine sehr gute "Cum On Feel The Noize" Version im Herbst gemacht, aber ich habe nichts über MXE gehört:

-Ilpo -

This

Peter König from Austria sent me a message this weeek, that he bought a CD with X-mas songs

" The Ultimative Chartshow"

On this CD is also Merry X-mas Everbody from Slade

You can order this CD bei Amazon.

Peter wrote to me :

"Ich habe mir soeben die neue Chartshow mit den beliebtesten Weihnachstsongs gekauft.
Auf der Rückseite steht allerdings:
Merry Xmas Everyone
und deshalb dachte ich, wird es halt wieder der Song von Shakin´Stevens sein.

Dennoch kaufte ich sie mir und siehe, da, es sind tatsächlich Slade mit dem orig. Song.
Wenn man im Mediaplayer den Song abspielt, was ich natürlich sofort tat, wird es nocht interessanter. Da steht sogar:
Merry Xmas For Everyone.
Slade hat also ein neue Weihnachtslied:
Merry Xmas 4 every1 !!!
Dazu kommt noch folgende Bemerkung meinerseits: Niemals dachte ich, dass ich je eine und dieselbe CD kaufen werde, auf der gleichzeitig Heintje, Vicky Leandros, Roy Black, Peter Alexander und SLADE drauf sein werden.
Auf dieser CD ist dies Wirklichkeit geworden.
Also nichts wie kaufen - meine Empfehlung und schöne Grüße an das Xkind von
Sladie1
Peter

This message arrived to the International Slade Mailingist from : Thorbjörn Brorsson

 left: 1. Merry Xmas Everybody
2. Metal Guru
3. Mama We're All Crazee Now
4. Gud Bye T'Jane
http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=6227

right: 1. Merry Xmas Everybody
2. Don't Blame Me
from Belgium

http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=229388

Japan

http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=354672

Slade star Jimmy Lea says he's sick of hearing Merry Christmas Everybody months before Christmas.

Lea, who played bass for the Seventies rockers, also says he's had enough of Christmas altogether.

He co-wrote the song with Noddy Holder, but said: "Our record gets played too early. Why can't people wait? Merry Xmas Everybody was written for Christmas Day.

"You don't start singing Happy Birthday to somebody two months before the day. Please don't start playing it again yet. I don't want to hear it for at least another month."

The Sun says Lea, 54, has also told family and friends he's not bothered with Christmas this year.

"I am withdrawing from the festive market. Thanks for your support over the years," said his note.

He added: "I'm no Scrooge, it's just that I'm sick and tired of the Christmas hysteria. I think it's ridiculous. I don't want presents because there is nothing I need and I don't intend to give any because of all the hassle.

"I'm not slagging off Christmas Day and I'm not biting the hand that feeds me. I wanted to write an anthem for Christmas Day - but I never dreamt it would still be played 30 years later."

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_838292.html?menu=news.quirkies

Former Slade singer Noddy Holder talks to Neil McCormick about those mis-spelt song titles - and the moment when he fell in love with pop

You might not think there is much dignity in a grown man being known to one and all as Noddy, but then Neville Holder has never given the impression of caring about social decorum or coolness.

"Slade were never cool," he declares of his much loved, multi-million selling band. "We were four blokes from Wolverhampton, it didn't even enter our heads that we could be cool.

"I'll tell you what sums it up for me: we used to get invited to all the showbiz dos and most of the stars would wait for the red carpet and make the grand entrance. But we never arrived late and we never left early, because we'd get all the free booze and free food and more of it. We just thought, 'We're a rock and roll band, we've made the big time, we're going to make the most of it.'"

Holder and his cohorts were the clown princes of the '70s British music scene, somehow counterbalancing the outrageousness of their appearance with a salt-of-the-earth everyman quality, performing singalong pop with the blockbusting thump of hard rock.

In a career spanning 25 years, Slade notched up more than 20 UK hit singles, including six number ones (and that's only counting Merry Xmas Everybody once, although it has charted eight times), all of which are collected together on The Very Best of Slade, along with a DVD featuring some of the least fashionable costumes and most enthusiastic performances ever seen on Top of the Pops.

At 59, Holder may no longer sport top hats garlanded with mirrors and the biggest mutton-chop whiskers in showbusiness, but he exudes the same cheerful approachability, his lack of airs and graces emphasised by a lilting Midlands accent and a jolly, wheezing laugh.

He has been Noddy, he tells me, since he was seven years old (for the prosaic reason that he nodded his head instead of saying "yes").

"So it looks like I'm stuck with it." It was the same age that he first took to the stage, singing at "free and easy" sessions in working men's clubs where his father, a window cleaner, also used to perform.

"Today you'd probably call it karaoke - anybody could get up and do a song." Holder belted out Frankie Lane's I Believe one fateful day in 1953. "I'd got a soprano voice but real powerful even then, and it absolutely tore the place apart. It was downhill all the way from then. I got the bug."

Watching The Girl Can't Help It in the cinema in 1957 was another defining moment, and one that still inspires a gush of enthusiasm.

"When I saw Little Richard dressed in a silk suit with that big bouffant greased hair, pounding the piano, screaming his head off, shaking his arse, the band behind him swinging, I just flipped. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. That is what rock and roll is: shock, performance, primal beat."

And therein lie the roots of Slade's sartorial extravagance and musical exuberance. "By the end of the '60s, everything was about being cool. Bands were standing with their backs to the audience, hair hanging down, doing long solos.

'We were the total opposite, setting out to make three-minute raucous pop records. We always picked the most outrageous, brightly coloured things to wear. I wanted us to walk onstage and even before we'd played a note, we'd got their attention."

Formed as the 'N Betweens in 1966, Slade developed their trademark sound through years as a popular covers band.

"Dave [Hill] and I both played lead guitar. Jim [Lea] played the bass like a lead guitar, so we had the idea of playing harmony riffs, it was really like having three lead guitarists.

" Drummer Don Powell made up the quartet, and Slade's sledgehammer sound was topped off by Holder's raw-throated vocals. He has a voice that lends authenticity to anything he sings, even though material such as Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me and Cum On Feel the Noize was hardly emotionally or philosophically demanding.

Slade's comical misspellings reflect a proudly working-class lack of pretension. The first song Holder and Lea wrote together (and their first number one) was Cuz I Luv You.

"That's how I wrote it on the lyric sheet, phonetically, in our Black Country dialect, like it was written on a toilet wall," recalls Holder.

Slade remained an enormously popular live attraction until they parted, on good terms, in 1991. "Twenty five years was enough," says Holder.

Although he has not pursued a solo musical career, he keeps himself busy as an actor, radio DJ, television personality, jingle writer and voiceover artist for ads and children's cartoons. "I was brought up in a working-class family and I don't think you ever get nothing for nothing in this life," he says.

Hill and Powell subsequently reformed as Slade II. "Me and Jim made more money, because we had written all the songs," says Holder. "Merry Xmas Everybody is a pension plan, it goes on for ever and ever."

He has not been to see the reconstituted Slade live ("Never have and never would"), but he did see Oasis perform Cum on Feel the Noize at Manchester's Maine Road stadium in 1996. "It was great seeing 40,000 kids going crazy to a song you'd written 30 years before."

From Little Richard to recent hits such as Sugababes' Push the Button, Holder believes that a melodic single with a powerful beat is the essence of what pop music is all about. And he is delighted to have played his part.

"Putting this compilation together was the first time I'd heard most of these tracks in years. I was surprised what cracking records they were. We were a red hot live band. I even surprised myself. I thought, 'Bloody hell! I could sing!'"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/11/17/bmnoddy17.xml